A Place to Call Home

I should be finishing up cleaning right now, but I need a little break from all the packing and cleaning.
Well, as of last night we officially have a place to call home…for two months at least. It’s kind of a crazy story. When I hadn’t heard back from a man who wanted to sublet his apartment for 2-3 months, I started looking around at apartment complexes again to see if anyone offered short term leases for a decent price. I found one in particular, that I thought might work out, but it was still a little more expensive than the apartment I had originally found.
Sunday night, I received an e-mail from the man who had the apartment for sublet. For some reason my previous e-mails hadn’t gone though. He apologized and said the apartment was still available if we’d like to come see it.
Then on Monday, I found a home that had been newly listed for rent. It was a 4 bedroom, 1.5 bath, with 1800 sq ft. It was in the same area we’d lived before, and had a big fenced in backyard. Plus, it was available immediately. We thought it would be worth a shot to go see it and see if we liked it. If we did, we’d be able to move in right away and we would be done with moving for a year.
Wednesday night we went down to see the home. It was nice, but we just didn’t feel like it was right for us. We drove by the home we’ve been planning on, and even though they’re still doing renovations, we still felt like it was the right place for us.
So then we went to see the apartment for sublet. We thought it was pretty nice and actually gave the man a check for the deposit. It was really interesting though, afterwords when we had left and picked up the older kids (Thanks Amy!) we just started to feel like it wasn’t a good decision. It got worse and worse as we drove back, and we knew we hadn’t made the right decision. So when we got home after 11pm, we called the man with the apartment and told him we had changed our minds. So I canceled the check, and the next morning got to work on the application process for the apartment complex. We had to hurry and do all the paperwork, and ended up driving down to our 'new' old city again on Friday afternoon to sign papers and give the down payment on the apartment. (It’s a 2-hour drive between the two cities, so we’ve done a lot of traveling this week!) Even though the apartment was slightly more expensive than the one we originally thought we’d be taking, we feel so much more at peace with the decision. It’s amazing the difference between receiving a confirmation that what you’ve done is right or not. And we’ll look forward to living closer to where we used to live as well. The new place is actually just a couple blocks from our old apartment. And this makes me laugh, when we told Jacob we’d be moving to a place with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, his response was, “Wow!” He thought that was pretty awesome. In our kids' minds, a home with 2 bedrooms is big! I guess we've all gotten used to the 1-bedroom over the past couple months. I'm excited for 2 bedrooms too!
So now we’re finishing our packing and getting ready to move. We’ll be settled for two months, and then hopefully we’ll be able to move into our new home where we’ll get to stay for at least 9 months before making another move (which will also be another short term 4-month stay).
We’re definitely getting better at the packing/moving process, but I’m sure going to be happy when we don’t have to do it so often!

More posts & pictures to come later….back to cleaning for me!